1 Now you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it like a barber’s razor, to shave your head and your beard. Then take a balance scale for weighing and divide the hair.
2 Set a third on fire within the city, when the days of your siege are completed; place another third around the city and strike it with the sword; the final third scatter to the wind and then unsheathe the sword after it.
3 But take a few of the hairs and tie them in the hem of your garment.
4 Take some of these and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire. Because of this, fire will flash out against the whole house of Israel.
5 Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem! I placed it in the midst of the nations, surrounded by foreign lands.